Saudi Arabia pushes to give Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan a civilian veneer

Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al‑Khereiji has been holding private meetings in Riyadh with key figures from Abdallah Hamdok’s Somoud coalition and other technocrats since March, aiming to build a civilian political front around Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council chairman, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan. The effort is intended to revive the Jeddah peace process and present Burhan as a legitimate partner for a civilian transition despite the ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Burhan’s record, however, undermines the strategy: the United States imposed sanctions on him for atrocities and obstruction of cease‑fire talks, while UN investigators report tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the displacement of more than 13 million people. Human Rights groups have documented indiscriminate shelling and extrajudicial killings by SAF forces. In parallel, Saudi Arabia is reportedly financing a $1.5 billion arms deal between Pakistan and the SAF, further strengthening Burhan’s military capacity. Analysts argue that the civilian bloc risks being seen as a superficial rebranding rather than a genuine path to civilian rule.

The consensus among observers is that the Saudi‑backed plan is unlikely to win broad Sudanese civilian support and may instead reinforce perceptions of foreign political engineering.